Perhaps we could start a conversation about joining forces along these lines? -drop me a note back if you agree…

Branding = hope? I thought affiliating with a brand = conformity?

While the act of choosing to affiliate, or align, with a brand may give someone a temporary “sense” of hope, that sense may certainly prove to be much more temporary than long lasting, much less being “true” (true = true = consistency over time). Satisfaction with any brand (that isn’t “true”) will only wane over time and ends with significant dissatisfaction by the consumer with that very brand.

Consumers who look to a brand for true fulfillment of hope in their lives are only bound to be disappointed and any brand that sets itself up to attempt to deliver on their customer’s “hope” (hope as currency?) is destined to be known as a failure.

dt

The major risks in my article have to do with the pricing LCD that the mass long-tail ones offer. It’s that pricing advantage and shotgun approach that enables the long-tail in a dangerous fashion.

Those who are smart enough to go vertical after slices usually put up better advertising. However, the problem is that even though you may get a 2x better conversion, if it’s 5x the price the economics do not work out for direct response.

Now, you could argue that the quality of the consumer over time will help elevate that by going after vertical slices, and you’d be correct in general, but most businesses I have run into do not think longterm enough for that.

Our industry, because of a lot of the Analytics tools we have, get painted with a DR only brush by most clients. And it’s the “most” that is causing the issues we have now.

You bring up some interesting points but your definition of the long tail of online media audiences is incomplete.

You assume that all long tail audiences are accessed through lowest common denominator non-exclusive horizontal ad networks.

Not all are.

Long-tail online audiences need context and vetting to be top online media vehicles. This where Vertical – Exclusive Ad Networks come into
play.

There is a reason that vertical ad networks are currently
thriving while others are struggling. The connection between strong editorial content and quality brand advertisers still works and is alive and well within the exclusive vertical ad networks.

In fact, the study by Atlas Research entitled, “the effect of
overlapping audiences and reach and frequency” supports the fact if you run your ad across multiple publishers vs. Just one, you get a 2x conversion rate.

Anyhow, aggregating quality online vertical audiences creates synergy for advertisers far beyond the reach of any behavorial technology alone can muster.

Remember, many of the quality mid and long tail audiences are off-limits to horizontal ad networks due to their exclusive sales representation agreements.

Bob Sacco
co-founder
Travel Ad Network

Well, yes the first step SHOULD be the quality of the creative but unfortunately I do not think that is realistic. Teaching the world taste is something that I believe is beyond us because taste is about having ownership of your brand for expansion long-term. Most just want to sell more product. Now. The ones that do consider it are the ones that will grow beyond the small business.

The banner world is quickly becoming almost solely a venue for direct response. If the ads are more relevant to the consumer then hopefully, over time, tools which allow those small businesses to easily make banners in a template based system will also be less garish. The current systems that do have ugly ass templates. Good template designers for those systems would be a good step.